Longtime Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce reportedly met with various television networks while he was in Las Vegas, Nev. last week to watch Super Bowl LVIII. The companies with whom Kelce has spoken are said to include ESPN, FOX Sports, Amazon Prime Video and CBS Sports, according to Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports.
Kelce and his brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, co-host the New Heights podcast together through Wave Sports + Entertainment. The show is currently ranked among the most-listened to sports podcasts in the world discussing a variety of topics pertaining to football and lifestyle as a whole. The Chiefs were recently crowned Super Bowl champions and will hold their victory parade tomorrow in Kansas City. A new episode of New Heights following the victory – marking Travis Kelce’s third championship – has yet to be released.
Jason Kelce appeared on Amazon Prime Video’s presentation of Thursday Night Football earlier in the 2023 season, spending time with both the TNF Tonight studio team and in the broadcasting booth with Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit. There have been rumors surrounding Kelce potentially retiring from the National Football League, although nothing is substantive in that domain at the moment. Kelce has worked with Amazon before for the Kelce documentary, which is when conversations occurred about him joining the Thursday night broadcast crew for a game during his bye week.
Kelce’s brother, Travis, is dating award-winning singer and songwriter Taylor Swift, who was present at Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday night to watch the Chiefs hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The game broadcast was the final one under CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus and drew an average total audience delivery of 123.7 million viewers across multiple platforms, the largest television program in U.S. history. Nielsen Media Research and Adobe Analytics provide the viewership data, which takes into account on-air and streaming platforms plus out-of-home viewership.
In broadcasting, as in sports, you look at the numbers in the end. And what the NFL’s numbers for both the season and the Super Bowl ought to tell the league is this: Storylines carry the day.
Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Chiefs and 49ers brought in an average of 123.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen. It’s the highest number of people in TV history to ever watch the same broadcast. And Nielsen put the number of those who watched any portion of the broadcast at 202.4 million, a staggering 10% increase from last year. Business is good.
It certainly didn’t hurt that A.) The Chiefs were trying to win back-to-back titles, B.) The 49ers have a huge following, too, C.) The game went into overtime and D.) It was won by Patrick Mahomes, who is ascending to the top tier of quarterbacks to ever play the game.
All good. All real. But anyone who doesn’t at least partially credit the impact of the Taylor Swift angle here is either being willfully ignorant or just doesn’t understand the importance of building out as many storylines as possible — all the time.
It’s in the numbers. When Swift attended Chiefs games during the season, TV ratings shot up 15% higher in the early Sunday time slot and 9% higher in the late Sunday slot, according to a back-of-the-napkin analysis by the New York Times. Ratings were up over average for the Thursday night game Swift attended. They were up for the two Sunday night games she went to.
And there are lots of factors at play, right? It isn’t necessarily only one thing. The Chiefs just generally being a high-profile powerhouse helps, and the fact that the defending Super Bowl champs hit a rough stretch during the regular season — they lost five of eight games at one point — added drama and uncertainty.
Meanwhile, Mahomes’ acclaim as a best-in-class QB put extra spin on the idea of grabbing two Lombardi trophies in a row. If he’s going to be mentioned with Brady, Montana and others, he was going to have to do that, right?
Lots of interesting angles. But it was the Swift-Travis Kelce romance that came in out of nowhere. And while it may seem like an obvious takeaway that more storylines attract more interest, sometimes it takes an outlier — like this one — to remind us that sports broadcasts are fundamentally dramas. They may not be soap operas, but they’re really not so far removed.
The Patriots in their heyday made for consistently great ratings partly because Tom Brady was the quarterback, partly because guys like Rob Gronkowski provided either comic relief or incredible drama, partly because Bill Belichick was an almost perfect villain — a lot of things, not only one thing.
But it doesn’t have to be confined to the field of play in order to draw eyeballs and grow audience. Brady married a supermodel, remember? She created her own business empire. Then he began to work on a business empire of his own. None of that had directly to do with football, but all of it worked to the good for the NFL, because storylines compel people to watch and want to know more.
The league isn’t precisely begging for attention. Last year, 93 of the top 100 broadcast programs were NFL games. But even for the mighty NFL, progress isn’t always linear. The 2023 regular season per-game average of 17.9 million viewers was the second-highest since its numbers started getting tracked in 1995 — but its biggest TV season was actually almost a decade ago, in 2015.
As for the coming year? It’s already teed up for the league. Mahomes wants to become the first quarterback in history to win three Super Bowls in a row, which would make the Chiefs the first team to do it, too. The combustible Andy Reid-Travis Kelce pairing, of which you saw a small flash during Sunday’s game (it was a royal gaffe of CBS not to drill down on it during the broadcast), will be back on display. Kelce and Swift, we assume, will be a talking point.
And that’s just the one team. Aaron Rodgers, a walking mini-drama all his own, is supposed to play for the Jets. The 49ers, with one of the strongest fan followings in the league, will be trying to break what is now a 30-year Super Bowl drought. The Texans and their Offensive Rookie of the Year, CJ Stroud, are poised to bust out. The Dallas Cowboys’ extended post-season misery plays on a national scale.
These are all drama points, and the NFL’s broadcast partners no doubt already anticipate them. What this past season taught us, or reminded us, was the amazing value of the storyline you don’t see coming. Only a league intent on leaving money on the table would fail to capitalize on that kind of gift.
Tyler Webb is the co-founder of Uncle Charlie Marketing and a freelance content creator with a focus on sports business. Webb has over 153K followers on Tik Tok and 130K on YouTube. His breakdowns of sports business stories have led to brands such as Sports Business Journal, Tick Pick and Sleeper Fantasy Sports contracting him for projects.
Webb graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2020, and with a canceled internship due to COVID fell into the world of freelance social media management. Following graduation, he connected with his business partner Jake Kranz. Webb and Kranz launched Uncle Charlie Marketing in 2021, a sports marketing agency producing organic social content for clients.
By the summer of 2022 Webb got the itch to produce social content for himself, which his business partner graciously allowed. Through trial and error, he settled on a break-neck style of producing vertical videos that entertain and inform sports fans and sports business junkies.
In this conversation with BSM Digital Director Alex Reynolds, Webb discusses his process for producing videos and why he – and social media as a whole – may be shifting to a slower approach. Be advised this conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. For the full conversation check out the BSM YouTube page. To catch up on prior conversations from our Social Studies series, click here.
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AR: I definitely want to dive into the sports business portion of the content creation that you’re doing now but let’s first go back to those early agency days: What did you learn about social media in that time?
TW: I learned a lot. I think the lens that I was able to learn through was how to communicate what you were doing on social media. I’m a bit more of a purist in the sense that I want to do the things that I think are going to work well. And early on, I didn’t take outside feedback very well. So it was nice to have Jake to sort of smooth out my rough edges.
At the same time, when I was interfacing with clients, I had to realize that there are considerations you have to make from a client perspective. They’re handing their brand over to you. In a way it’s an exercise that requires a lot of trust. To think that you know best for what their brand is a little foolish and naive. Maybe even a little overconfident. Being able to understand, what’s the lens that people are seeing this through? It’s not me doing everything for them. It’s me being a shepherd of their brand.
Secondly, there are just ways that you have to communicate better when doing it. It shouldn’t be ‘I’m doing this because I think it’ll do well.’ You can extrapolate many things from many strategies. There are ways to say better what you’re doing then ‘I’m just going to do it because I think it works.’
AR: Tell me about going off on your own, finding your voice on social media, and discovering your lane in sports business.
TW: So I mentioned the bad iterations of content that I did before. I’ve now realized, and this is only the benefit of hindsight, I wasn’t checking three boxes for me when I was doing stuff that wasn’t working.
I wasn’t doing stuff that felt like I could do it for a long time. I think there’s an element of consistency that you have to bake into, especially this kind of short form content. You can overextend yourself and make content for a week and be like, ‘Man, I’m tired, I can never do that again.’ For me, sitting down in front of a microphone is a much more sustainable format.
Two was just what I felt qualified to talk about. When I look back at those early videos, I’m not the best video editor. I’m probably not even the best agency owner. So to talk about those things from a position of, ‘I know what I’m doing better than you know what you’re doing’, felt really disingenuous. It came across that way too. Me talking about my general interest in stories in sports and business and marketing, based on my experience, was a much more natural fit.
Three was something that performed well. I think the niche, specifically of sports business, was underserved to an extent. Obviously, there’s plenty of people that are willing to give you their take on the top five quarterbacks and talk about sports at large. But the niche of the financial, economic, and human interest side of sports, I thought was relatively under tapped. And so I was able to succeed in some of these videos.
I like to equate it to a Venn diagram of, I’m sitting in the middle of stuff that performs well, stuff that feels natural to me that I feel qualified to talk about, and stuff that I can talk about for a very long time.
AR: What about your process and what it looks like in terms of research and production.
TW: The research for me goes back to topic selection, finding angles that I think I can take. Then, I just do a lot of reading. My favorite sources are the Front Office Sports and Sports Business Journal’s of the world. I try to get as many sources and cross check as many facts and figures.
Then I sit and try to work on the hook first. If I can’t find a compelling hook, no matter how interesting the entire story is, it’s not a video I’m going to make. You don’t want to be too sensationalizing and say something that’s completely false. But I think there are creative ways to say something that might seem hard to believe or maybe is hard to believe, to the extent that it’s not true if you take it at face value, but only in watching the entire video does that initial hook get explained.
The tricky part about short form social [content] is you can have something that’s super sensationalized or super click-baity. If somebody doesn’t understand the context of why it matters to them (people are very selfish when they’re watching) they’re not going to sit there and watch because they don’t think the information they’re about to receive is applicable to them.
So in that first couple of seconds, say something that’s going to shock them. Get them to stop scrolling. Then say something that puts it in context for why it matters to them. Then very quickly, you have to get into the information. Because if you don’t start backing up that information right away, people are gonna say, ‘Yeah, this is a total waste of my time,’ right?
I think people are willing to stick around if the information is good. You keep giving them that same feedback loop of saying something sensational and backing it up. Depending on how long your video is, you might have to repeat that cycle two or three or four times. But if you can keep repeating and then backing up, repeating and backing up, I think people are willing to sit around for a long time.
AR: Tell me about the audience that you’ve found on TikTok. They’re not only coming to you for entertaining content around sports, but actual sports business content.
TW: I heard something said recently, ‘not every piece of content is going to serve every segment of your audience in every single way.’ There are some pieces of content when I’m making it, I know it’s going to be widely appealing. Maybe it’s just a very visual concept, maybe it’s not a super dense concept. This is going to be a “viral” type video where you know it’ll have mass appeal.
Then there are other videos that are for my hardcore, sports marketing nerds. Those probably will never do as well as something that has a super high viral appeal. And that’s okay, because it’s meant to target a certain subset of people.
I think a differentiating factor is that I also have worked in the industry. That brings out a certain young college student professional that’s aspiring to work in sports media, or aspiring to work in sports business. The fact that I get to rely on that experience from time to time, or have it as a backdrop to my content, I think pulls out the young professionals.
I kind of find myself in that professional segment of people, whereas maybe people making content about sports at large, are just falling into the lap of the casual fan. Again, I’m sure a lot of my content does fall into the lap of the casual fan, but I’m finding that my most dedicated fan base and the people I interface with the most also work in the industry.
AR: Tell me a little bit about the strategies outside of Tik Tok and Instagram. You also use X, YouTube and LinkedIn so kind of dive into those.
TW: The short form stuff that you mentioned (Tik Tok/ Instagram Reels) that’s just going to be the machine that keeps running. I’ve got it systemized down to a process where I know I can get a video out per day. So now for me in 2024, it’s trying to drive subscribers to my newsletter, which is long form written content. Then it’s long form YouTube, which is a totally different type of beat than the kind of short form content that I make.
I’ve been really active on LinkedIn for a while, and I only just started repurposing my LinkedIn content to X. But the dirty secret is that my LinkedIn content is just a repurposing of the scripting that I’m doing for my Tik Tok.
Frank Michael Smith, a really talented creator that I aspire to be in a lot of ways, he continually reminds me, repurpose the stuff you do. I think it’s a really good reminder because I get caught up in my own BS where I’m like, ‘Everybody’s reading everything I’m putting out so they’re going to know that this post I had on LinkedIn is just a script for a Tik Tok that I posted last week.’ But you’re really hitting different segments.
Honestly, I think that’s probably been an unsung reason for some of my growth. I’m just perforating so many different areas of an organization that if the young social media intern brings my Tik Tok to an executive, that executive might have already seen my written stuff on a certain platform. There’s a coherence of what my brand is across all these different platforms and mediums.
AR: Wrapping up, is there anything you want to add about what you’ve observed about the current state of the social media landscape?
TW: I think we’re already in this shift. I’ve heard it being called FaceTime content, which I have really come to appreciate. It’s this idea that you don’t have to give your undivided attention to a piece of content to understand it and consume it. Podcasts are a great example of this, just having your ear.
I’m thinking about this in the context of YouTube, where there’s a YouTube video that I can have on, and I can walk away from it with my Bluetooth headphones and come back to it. And I’m still getting the gist of what’s happening without looking at it. Or I’ve set my phone down and I’m on the other side of the kitchen but a Tik Tok is playing and I’m listening to it.
My editing style in the past has been very in your face, very reliant on things happening on the screen. I think I’m looking now at a slower pace of editing something that is much more driven by storytelling and much less driven by editing style or sound effects and sensationalized visuals. I’m trying to get back to my roots as a really good storyteller. Because I want to make sure that people can walk away from whatever they’re doing, and still listen and understand what I’m talking about.
I think there’s another component to where people don’t feel like when they scroll on a video, maybe they’re a little tired, it’s late at night, early in the morning, they’re not in the best mood. Maybe they don’t have the energy to consume a three minute video by Tyler where I’m doing a deep dive on stadium urban planning. I want to make sure that I’m an easy watch or a low effort watch. That doesn’t mean the content gets stalled down or less involved. It’s kind of toning down this intensity in the content that it becomes a bit of an easier watch.
Some random thoughts as I finish up doing a snowstorm radio show from my basement. Mainly: Why Isn’t Jon Stewart on the radio?
In this era with so many voices coming out of so many places, I gravitate toward original, provocative, and insightful thoughts. Like him or not, disagree with him or not, Jon Stewart is smart, witty, and most importantly, unafraid.
His first Monday on The Daily Show will get praise and heat in equal doses, but his most important line about the public needing the ability to criticize leaders was so spot on.
I have not watched all of it, but it was refreshing for someone like Jon Stewart on the national scene to scream that it’s ok to say that the two men running for President are too old – and that it’s a real problem. Most people think it; few people say it.
It would be nice to get that more often and not just on the video screen.
Note: Some company should pony up $20 million a year to try it. I mean, if Sean Hannity is worth in the neighborhood of $25 million on radio, then Jon Stewart would be worth a multi-million dollar flyer.
Studio Is King
Hate is a strong word, reserved for despots, splinters … and the Yankees. But I really don’t like being outside of the studio, unless perhaps, it’s on remote for an event.
Looking back, I am glad that I was not full-time on the radio when the pandemic prohibited people in the office/studio. Others embraced it, got comfortable at home, and may still do it; but it is not for me.
Having said that, I must admit that on our only legitimate snowstorm of the season, it was kind of cool to get off the air and take the dogs on a long snow-filled walk.
The only difference from the pandemic-era was there was no drinking. For one day, I can handle tabling the hate.
Social Headaches
You never feel as old as when people start talking about social media.
I really felt for Ben Affleck when, in the extended version of his Dunkin’ add, mega influencer Charli D’Amelio asked him who he was.
She had no idea (in the skit).
Some people over 50 have embraced elements of social media, while some have actually learned to edit and a small few unicorns are actually good at it.
Not this guy.
I know it can be a great way to increase reach, impact, and name recognition; but I just stink at it.
But then, of course, I get a snowstorm, and I want to share stuff.
Weird.
I guess I can relate to snowy pics more than 15-second dances.
I wish I had the same fervor when taking in-studio videos, promoting interviews or simply taking a selfie, yet I do not see it happening.
And it’s a problem.
Be Accountable
It’s mid-February, where New Year’s resolutions go to die.
Admit it. You stopped doing core exercises, and weekday drinking is back.
As for radio and all of my ideas – from TikTok to remotes to listener meet-ups, it’s time for a temperature check. Yes, I am often the guy with the great idea and no follow-through. I’m a concept guy, I can’t deny it.
I’m trying to get better though. To that end, I’ve had some L’s, but I’m also on my way to a few possible W’s.
TikTok: Lopsided “L” — Not happening right now. It’s a crisis of confidence and ignorance (and my daughter says a fundamental lack of humor).
Other areas, not so bad.
We made a dart board of a map with every town in Connecticut. We filmed me throwing darts at towns, and in two weeks, we go visit our first one – will let you know how it goes.
Food: We solicited all the donut shop recommendations we could from our listeners and will soon start sampling and rating – though I’d like to find a way to fold this into “Darting Across Connecticut”.
We have a listener meet-up at a minor league hockey game in two weeks, and you can fully expect me to chug a beer while wearing a Hartford Whalers jersey. No brainer.
More to come, but in the meantime, enjoy the snow if you have it.
Today, millions of Catholics across the world will be adorned with ashes on their foreheads marking the start of penance and reflection for lent (myself included). Almost all faiths have some sort of penance or atonement to recognize we are not perfect, nor can we create anything that is perfect. While many of us aspire to perfection, let us not forget our ancestors crucified the one person who was perfect in this world, Jesus. While his passion and death have been reenacted several times, representation of all faith in the media has been lacking.
According to a Pew Institute research study, 28% of Americans listed their religions as “None.” In other words, 28% of Americans do not identify with a religion or faith, but many of them identify as “spiritual.” Pew also found 4% of U.S. adults are “atheists.” Yet, opportunities to provide wholesome, faith-based programming for the other 96% of Americans have been overlooked in the last 25 years. If the industry was smart it would see how representing faith has benefited the media.
In 1965, CBS executives debated if they should air A Charlie Brown Christmas. Not because it wasn’t good, but because they did not know how it would be received. It was an instant classic. Why the debate is not entirely clear. The 1920s brought America The 10 Commandments, Ben-Hur, and Joan of Arc, all of which would be remade in the 1940s and 50s during the Red Scare.
Religious themes and connotations were found in several other films and TV shows, but it was typically used for comedic purposes, including in The Blues Brothers. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd were “On a mission from God” to save “St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage,” where the pair grew up. While Sister Mary Stigmata did offer comedic relief it’s more so mocking “Penguins” then actually embracing them.
As the years went on there was less Ben-Hur in America and more stigmatizing of the church. The last major devoutly Christian, non-comedic film was Mel Gibson’s ThePassion of the Christ, released in 2004. Gibson’s film premiered during a tumultuous time for the Church. Just a few years earlier The Boston Globe broke the sex abuse scandal and people were fleeing from the institution. The blockbuster film was something Hollywood did not want to touch. Yet, people flocked to theaters to see it, earning $370.8 Million in its theater run. This was the last positive major religious film produced for nearly 20 years.
During this time, America was starved for religious media representation and it didn’t go unnoticed. We are now seeing a religious resurgence in the media industry. New York has several religious music radio stations now. Once popular WPLJ was replaced by KLOVE.
The Chosen has millions of viewers, many of whom are seeing Season 4 in theaters. Their production company, Angel Studios, is developing more faith-based programming for adults and children. This includes Young David, a cartoon that follows the life of King David before his battle with Goliath and becoming King. There is also Grace Hill Media and faith-based news outlets like the Catholic Faith Network.
Today also marks another important day for practicing Catholics, St. Valentine’s Day. A day meant to celebrate the martyr and patron saint of love, young people, and happy marriages has now been overtaken by Hallmark and the marketing industry. Instead of praying for young people, love, and joyful marriages, we now feel obliged to buy a card, chocolate, and roses.
The media industry has appropriated religious holidays like St. Valentine’s Day and Christmas not to honor the faith but instead to provide a secular alternative. These counterfeit representations are starving millions of believers. Instead of benefiting the soul of America holy days are now benefiting the wallets of marketing agencies and retailers. While holding holidays hostage does happen with almost all faiths, it is most prevalent with Christian holidays because we are a Christian nation.
This misappropriation becomes even worse when you turn to the news media. Outlets would rather have a Taylor Swift reporter instead of a faith reporter. Having a faith reporter would most certainly help frame the crisis in the Middle East better than classifying it as a “land war.” Quite honestly, I believe Americans would prefer reports on the latter of the two.
Regardless of how I feel, it is overwhelmingly clear Americans want more faith in the media. So friends of the industry please remember, keep Christ in Christmas. Chanukkah is worth more than a Mensch on a Bench. Eid al-Fitr marks the end of fasting, not the beginning of a gluttonous food intake. Most importantly, find ways to respect faith instead of misrepresenting it.
A special White House press conference in prime time on Feb. 8 was held in response to the recently reported findings by special counsel Robert Hur, which led to increased cable news viewing, especially for MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
Hur — a U.S. attorney originally appointed during the Trump administration — concluded from his investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents that the President shouldn’t face criminal charges but added the 81-year-old Biden was old and had trouble remembering dates, even the date his son Beau died.
A visibly angry President Biden proclaimed his memory as “fine” during the presser. As for his son Beau’s 2015 death from brain cancer, “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business,” Biden said.
Later, while discussing the humanitarian situation in Gaza amidst the Israel-Hamss war, Biden mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the “president of Mexico” — a gaffe that has gotten major coverage especially on the right-wing leaning outlets.
ABC, the lone broadcast network to televise Biden’s Feb. 8 press conference, was the presser’s most-watched outlet. From 7:57-8:14 p.m. ET, it drew 4.509 million total viewers and delivered a 0.65 rating within the key 25-54 demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research. (Note: a 1.0 rating in the 25-54 equates to 1.22 million viewers within the age range of 25 to 54, meaning approximately 793,000 in the demo on ABC.)
The press conference was not tabulated as a separate telecast by Nielsen on cable, but it was still evident that each of the three major cable news outlets got a sizable boost from the event. The 8-9 p.m. hour on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN on Feb. 8 combined for 6.88 million viewers and a 0.76 rating in adults 25-54. In the same Thursday night hour from Jan. 4 through Feb. 1, the three cable nets posted 4.92 million viewers including a 0.45 25-54 demo rating.
Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime (3.805 million viewers; 0.37 A25-54 rating) made up the largest bulk of that combo; the program had averaged 2.424 million viewers and 0.22 demo rating on Thursday nights in 2024 through Feb. 1.
MSNBC’sAll In with Chris Hayes (2.102 million viewers; 0.20 A25-54 rating) garnered the largest respective percentage increases compared to its previous five Thursdays — up 46 percent in viewers, up 84 percent in 25-54.
CNN‘s Anderson Cooper 360 rose 29 percent in total viewers (to 969,000) and 51 percent among adults 25-54 (to a 0.19 rating).
Harker Bos Group’s latest whitepaper, “State of Media 2024,” shows sports podcasting is leading the way when it comes to how frequently listeners tune in. The study, which explores the dynamic landscape of media consumption in 2024, involved over 500 individuals age 18 and above.
The question was asked, “How often do you listen to the following podcast genres?” Sports finished at the top of the list with 39% saying they listened to sports podcasts frequently (defined as 3-5 days per week). News/politics was next at 37% while true crime, comedy, self-help, pop culture, science/tech and society/culture all finished over 30%.
The study notes that 43% of podcast listeners prefer audio-only formats, while 35% show interest in a hybrid audio-video experience. 34% said they listen to entire podcast episodes, while another 30% say they consume most of the content. According to the findings, 48% of podcast listeners believe the ideal length of a podcast should be 30-60 minutes, while 29% chose between 15-29 minutes.
Overall, the study showed 65% of media consumers listen to radio weekly, with most tuning in for 30 minutes to 1 hour, predominantly in the morning. Additionally, 51% of radio audiences listen to news/talk and 38% tune into sports.
84% of those who participated in the study said they use social media with Facebook coming in the top spot as far as frequency. 68% said they use Facebook 3-5 days per week. YouTube was next at 56% followed by Instagram at 40%.
A whopping 27% of respondents said they use social media from 4-8 hours per day. Another 14% said the answer was more than 8 hours.
The Athletic is reporting ESPN and the College Football Playoff have reached an extension agreement of six years at $1.3 billion per year. The report says the deal will make ESPN the home of the new 12-team tournament through the 2031-32 season. It also notes the deal is contingent on CFP leaders finalizing details of their new format following the implosion of the Pac-12. Meetings are scheduled for next week, and the deal won’t be ratified until a vote on the structure and financials of the new playoff arrangement.
The current agreement between ESPN and the College Football Playoff has two years remaining at $608 million per year, which includes the semifinals and championship along with the other four ‘New Year’s Six’ games.
Pete Thamel of ESPN had speculated about the $1.3 billion price tag last month. There has also been speculation ESPN could sell off some of the games if another network wanted to get involved, similar to how the NFL playoffs work.
NEWS: ESPN and the College Football Playoff are in agreement on a 6-year, $7.8 billion rights extension pending the CFP resolving all of its outstanding issues, The Athletic has learned (With @NicoleAuerbach, @slmandel, @ChrisVannini )https://t.co/9icvebTzS2
The first round of the College Football Playoff in 2024 will happen the week ending Saturday, Dec. 21 at the home field of the higher seed. The matchups would be No. 12 at No. 5, No. 11 at No. 6, No. 10 at No. 7 and No. 9 at No. 8.
For 2024 and 2025, the quarterfinal rounds and the semifinal games will be played at rotated bowls:
2024 quarterfinals: Fiesta Bowl, Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl
2024 semifinals: Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl
2025 quarterfinals: Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl
2025 semifinals: Fiesta Bowl and Peach Bowl
2024-25 season title game: Jan. 20, 2025 in Atlanta
As one of the most popular radio hosts in America, it’s only natural that Dave Ramsey would receive backlash for some of his opinions or stances on personal finances.
During The Ramsey Show, the Ramsey Solutions founder argued that critics of his don’t understand that he is living proof that the things he teaches about personal wealth management are items he has learned the hard way from his own financial missteps.
“You can’t out-earn your stupidity. I went broke trying that. I’m good at making money. I’ve always been good at making money. What I wasn’t good at was taking care of it once I made it. And that’s how I went broke at 28 years old,” admitted Ramsey.
“And then from then on, I’ve been telling everybody else not to do this. ‘Dave Ramsey just doesn’t understand.’ Dave Ramsey’s, done it. Shut up. I am the story. Shut up. No excuses. Work. Go do it.”
The topic was broached as Ramsey mentioned that an influx of new listeners prompted him to reiterated his seven “baby steps” to handling personal finance issues. George Kamel — a Ramsey Solutions personality — shared he began following the steps when he was 23 years old and held $40,000 in consumer debt. A decade later, Kamel has a million dollar net worth and no debt.
Jon Stewart made his much-anticipated return to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show Monday. 710 WOR host Mark Simone is a fan of Stewart’s delivery and says he represents a bygone era of cable TV.
While discussing Stewart’s return Tuesday, Mark Simone argued that while he doesn’t agree with the comedian’s politics, Stewart is willing to do things very few others in the cable news space will even consider.
“Obviously, he’s a left-wing guy. He’s a Trump hater. He’s a Democrat, obviously. But people forget that back in the good old days of The Daily Show, he would every so often make jokes about the Democrats, make jokes about Hillary, he’d make jokes about Obama,” said Simone. “And this sounds really strange today. But if you went back 15 years ago, or 20 years ago, and you watched CNN, MSNBC, or any of these networks, they had people from both sides on at all times.
“I know this is hard to believe, but if you were watching Bill O’Reilly on Fox News 20 years ago, it was him debating Barney Frank, debating Bernie Sanders. He would always have the Democrats on and he would debate them. And if you watched MSNBC 20 years ago, 15 years ago, it was Democrats and Republicans debating each other. I used to be on MSNBC every day during the day. And every hour, they would have a panel debate for 10 minutes. Sometimes it’d be me and Rachel Maddow, she didn’t have her own show yet…I used to be on CNN all the time. They had both sides.”
Mark Simone then juxtaposed that former cable news situation to what is featured on partisan channels today.
“In today’s broadcasting world or talk show world, you just do one side. You don’t do both sides. Now why is that? Maybe we’re less tolerant. We can’t listen to you. That could be part of it. I think what it is when you go online to do stuff now, everything is a filter,” Simone argued. “You filter everything. In other words, you want to shop for clothes? You go to the website and you don’t say ‘Show me all the clothes you got.’ You filter it. I’m looking for pants, I’m looking for this color, I’m looking for this style and it just shows you what you want.
“So I think we developed that kind of mentality. Even when you go Amazon or YouTube. It’s got algorithms filtering for you at all times. It knows what you like. It’s only showing you what you like. So I think we kind of ended up doing that with everything with broadcasting as well. It just gives you what you want. Nothing else.”
